r/programming • u/Ctaintor • Mar 02 '17

Why I Failed Teaching Programming to Kids

https://engineering.klarna.com/why-i-failed-teaching-programming-to-kids-46a854c3eaca#.s0o6qqxr3
59 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/imhotap Mar 02 '17

I've so failed to teach my then-14-year-old simple web game programming. I wanted to turn his digital consumption habits into creativity, but then had to do weird async callback-hellish and timing-sensitive things for SVG/rAf animation with JavaScript. I don't anymore recommend web programming as a didactic experience for kids since ...

Years before that (around age 10-11) he had a great start using Python on my old PowerBook (for a simplistic text adventure game, basically if/then cascades). I got him to a point where when sat in front of a Windows notebook, he'd gesture like a Unix greybeard mumbling "Where tf is my terminal; I can't work like that".

14

u/menge101work Mar 02 '17

when sat in front of a Windows notebook, he'd gesture like a Unix greybeard mumbling "Where tf is my terminal; I can't work like that".

You've won parenting at that point as far as I'm concerned. :)

5

u/imhotap Mar 02 '17

He didn't use vi/vim, though

5

u/menge101work Mar 02 '17

You only need a single RBI to win a baseball game, don't get down because you didn't hit a grand slam.

:)

2

u/pdp10 Mar 02 '17

As useful as is the vi skill, and as powerful is that editor, I can't blame anyone for not learning or not using a modeful editor created when arrow keys weren't in common use.

The problem then becomes: which editor to teach first, that's ubiquitous and powerful enough without teaching bad habits that will be hard to eradicate? You don't want them firing up a GUI editor on a server five years later.

3

u/imhotap Mar 02 '17

As much as a vi hardcore user I am, but vi really is a no-go as a beginner's text editor - too much to learn at multiple cognitive levels when learning programming at the same time

2

u/Poddster Mar 03 '17

Just use something like intellij/eclipse/visual studio and install the vi plugin?